Soft Palate Stretch

1. The Soft Palate Stretch builds on our Practice Yawn. Make a typical yawn (vertical oval). Remember that even thinking about a yawn may be enough to trigger the actual yawn. Once you have your oval in place, open it further into a circle.
   
   
2. While you are experiencing the widest part of the yawn, simply lift your upper jaw a bit further and flatten down the back of your tongue. These are small and subtle movements and should not be forced or prolonged. Once or twice is enough.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Coping with Unscheduled Stress: First Response

A stressful event pops up like a shark in your guppy tank without any advanced warning. It is possible, however, to practice in advance how to best handle this “shark” so that you handle the situation as well as humanly possible.

Remember that THE WORSE THE SITUATION IS, THE MORE IMPORTANT YOUR BREATHING BECOMES. Repeat after me! THE WORSE THE SITUATION IS, THE MORE IMPORTANT YOUR BREATHING BECOMES. This is not the time for you to be holding your breath or shallow breathing. Practice First Response until you can react without thinking, without hesitation, as if you were handling your car in a skid. Your body may not have time to phone your brain for instructions.

First Response

1. In the first split-second of a real or perceived crisis (physical, emotional or intellectual) immediately BREATHE OUT. Release as much air as is comfortable. Relax your shoulder as you exhale, letting go of all surface tension. When you grab a big gulp of air without exhaling first, you force the incoming air down on top of stale air, air that was already used up and waiting to be exhaled which leaves you with an expanded chest but not enough oxygen.
2. After that first release, assume normal slow and deep breathing. You are focused. You are clear. You are ready. Remember that your breathing bridges mind, body and spirit so it is a quick way to pull yourself together in a hurry.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Blind Nose

Advertisers have done a terrific job convincing the public that laundry, carpets and draperies cannot possibly be clean unless they reek with a company’s cheap perfume. Repeat anything long enough and consumers will believe it.

Pity your poor nose because it is bombarded every hour of every day with heavily scented capert cleaner, room freshener, furniture polish, scented toilet paper, kitty litter, hand soap, perfume, after-shave, deodorant, hair spray, foot powder, moth balls, candles and always – the laundry. Your pulmonary system was not designed for any of this and will eventually be on overload.

This is not 17th century France where perfume was designed and refined to mask horrific odors that would curdle our modern senses. Remember your nose goes “blind” a few seconds after you splash on that half-cup of after-shave. You quickly lose any sense of how you smell but others do not.

A great purple cloud of fragrance that continues to hover around you is rarely appreciated and can trigger allergies in defenseless bystanders, especially young children. It is easy to offend the pulmonary senses of friends and co-workers who never complain for fear of hurting your feelings. Ask a friend if they think you need to cut back a bit.

Scent is not a sin. Nor should it become a mindless indulgence. Another person should be able to register your particular fragrance only when they are close enough to hug you. We wish you many hugs.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Elastic Cage

Although your bony ribcage serves you well as chest armor, taken alone this assembly of bones is unable to draw in or release a single breath. To turn this bone-vessel into a breathing-machine, Nature first lays down two layers of muscle (the intercostals) that crisscross each other between adjacent ribs. One layer helps with inhalation and the other with exhalation.

In addition to the intercostals between the ribs, the multiple-muscled diaphragm stretches like a complex, elastic floor across the bottom of the cage, and serves as the most powerful and important breathing tool you have. Now your bony cage, with its strategically placed muscles, has become a powerful pump, able to move air in and out of your body, on command.

The elusive muscle floor of the diaphragm attaches around the bottom rim of the ribcage, and to the waist-level lumbar spine at the rear. This big diaphragm serves simultaneously as the elastic floor of your ribcage, and the elastic ceiling of your abdominal cage.

The constant rising and flattening action of this powerful sheath as it pumps the air in and out, gently massages the heart and lungs as it rises, and in turn, the stomach, liver, spleen and intestines as it flattens down. Absolutely amazing! We won’t spend much time with anatomy but you will be well served to have some understanding and control of your main breathing muscles.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Sandwich Muscles I
Upside Down Breathing

Chronic Stress: When Good Systems Go Bad

CHRONIC STRESS is a huge, spiky, scaly, drooling monster that lurks in the shadows, waiting to drop a whoop-ass load of damage onto your physical, emotional and intellectual self. You are designed to manage short bursts of stress quite easily but you are simply not designed to carry that load 24/7.

The Stress Monster thrives not so much on circumstances AROUND YOU but on the habits and attitudes WITHIN YOU. Stress loves to make you old too soon and sick too often.

Simply put, we poison ourselves with our own stress chemistry.

Hiked up adrenaline reactive behavior is an essential part of our survival but turning it on unnecessarily or forgetting to turn it off can be more dangerous than the original threat. GET THROUGH IT AND GET OVER IT.

Anticipate the situations that trigger anger, worry and fear. Prepare for them IN ADVANCE. Always keep a couple of favorite relaxing breathing exercises in your hip pocket and defuse this sucker before it kills you!

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

Hissing Breath

You may occasionally feel too scrambled to begin meditation or subtle breathing exercises immediately. That’s OK. On those truly crazy days it’s best to apply the brakes slowly and ease yourself gradually out of maximum stress into calm.

Let’s explore an INTERMEDIATE exercise that can help you STEP DOWN GRADUALLY from your hectic day. The more scattered you feel, the more important meditation and breathing exercises become to your mind, your body and your spirit.

The Hissing Breath gives you helpful AUDIBLE feedback. Later we will work on a few meditation-in-motion exercises that give you VISUAL feedback. Because you have had a particularly tough day it is especially important that you go about this exercise without pushing or forcing.

1. As always, empty first. Then inhale slowly and easily through your nose. Fill comfortably.
2. Send the air out as you make a long even hissing sound. . . hissssssssssssss. Empty comfortably without forcing. Almost immediately you will feel your systems slow down.
3. Continue as long as you remain focused and comfortable.

Remember that you never allow any discomfort (mind or body) with any breathing exercise. If the really long slow hissing out breath makes you a little light-headed, then try breathing out by making a “shhhhhh” sound. This moves the air out a little more quickly.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.

The Body’s Shock Absorbers

Mother Nature showed her usual creative brilliance when she gave you three incredibly strong but lightweight bony cages that house:

1. The brain, hearing and visual equipment
2. The heart and lungs and
3. The baby-basket.

Bone is porous so it’s relatively light and, when broken, has the capability of mending itself stronger than ever. However, your body must have resilience and “give” as well as stability and strength. Nature has to keep your heart and lungs functioning constantly even when a 240-pound guard tackles you or when you fall out of the cherry tree or when you take a jolting step off a ladder.

If Nature hadn’t made our bony cages flexible, we would be a pile of bone bits the first time we were rear-ended. Notice that our feet are arched, that our spine is a long soft “spring” made up of gentle curves, that the forward end of each rib turns into tough elastic cartilage and that the bony spinal vertebrae are separated by plump squishy disks. Still, step off that ladder carefully.

Be well. Breathe beautifully.